The late Former President Jerry John Rawlings
After his death, persons who found the observations of former President Jerry John Rawlings distasteful during his last days are struggling to be associated with him.
Of course the efforts do not add up evidence easily referred to about how some of these persons described the deceased as a ‘barking dog’ who had been tamed.
Some went to the extent of calling him ‘Volta god’ when he sought to correct the wrongs in the party he founded.
Others sulked over his incessant queries about their bad governance and its attendant corruption-laden tenure.
A few days ago, former President John Mahama who was of course not one of the deceased’s buddies, during a hastily arranged remembrance discourse tried to spew nice words about him.
For those who have followed his tenure at the helm of state did not find the words coherent enough to be convincing.
Exhorting NDC members to write books that capture the ideals of the NDC founder lest as he put it, revisionists do so and bastardise what he stood for sounded surreal. Ordinarily, he sought to present himself as an admirer of the late Jerry John Rawlings, but observers of developments in the party in the last days of the founder think otherwise.
In any case, a book has already been composed by Prof. Kwamina Ahwoi, a publication which disturbed the hornets’ nest and had the party founder reacting rather angrily. He did not find the entries truthful.
When former President John Mahama speaks about books, he must be careful he does not ignite new and probing thoughts. Not at this time anyway.
Why does he not write the said book he thinks should precede the revisionists’?
With his experience of ‘My First Coup d’etat’ he would be better primed to write a book about the so-called revolution of which he was not a part.
The former President should be mindful about his public speeches, especially as they relate to the late founder of the party he failed to lead to an electoral victory in two recent elections.
Delving further into who the revisionists are, would make interesting analysis. Could they be within the fold of the NPP or the NDC?
Prof. Kwamina Ahwoi’s ‘Working With Rawlings’ like other publications of its stature, is a piece of history according to the observation of somebody who really worked with the former President. Is the Prof. one of the revisionists he is referring to?
As to whether or not his observations represent the reality about working with Rawlings or not should be left to the reader.